Dark Horse brings out their best and brightest talent for the 8th installment of their legendary anthology Dark Horse Presents. For anyone new to Dark Horse’s line of titles this anthology is a perfect jumping-on point. Dark Horse Presents #8 collects both new and old titles that accurately showcase the publisher’s diverse line of comics. Not every comic featured in the anthology is a hit, though. However, with stories from Mike Mignola and Brain Wood, Dark Horse Presents #8 is a collection worth picking up.

One of my favorite web series out on the web is The Guild and when I found out that Dark Horse was coming out with a one-shot comic book about the characters from the show I just knew I had to read it.

The Guild: Clara in particular is about Clara who is the lovable but ignorant member of the group. The story starts with an in-game meeting in the MMORPG that they play, while in the meeting Clara’s husband starts getting angry with her about not cleaning up their bedroom that has all of their moving boxes from 10 months back. He gives her an ultimatum that if she doesn’t clean the room by the end of the weekend, she can’t play the game for a week. Clara, while cleaning the room with her kids, stumbles upon all of her keepsakes and starts telling the stories behind each one. Her husband comes home and is surprised that she has kept all of these keepsakes.

John McClane saves the day again in Die Hard Year One #8. As the blackout rages on in New York City John wraps up the hostage situation in true McClane fashion. The real villains behind the blackout and their real plans are revealed. McClane and his partner Detective Olga Cruces work to find the criminals responsible for the blackout and stop the bank robbery in progress. As a nice taste of what is to come there is a nice juicy peek into McClane’s future on the last page.

Howard Chaykin continues to blow me away with one of the best licensed properties out there. The twists and turns that usually are easily seen in a prequel work very well in every issue of this comic. Chaykin is great at taking what is essentially an action movie and splitting it into multiple issues while keeping just enough exposition and action in each one of the issues. I continue to put this book at the top of my stack every week, excited to see what happens next in McClane’s first year on the Force and how he meets all of his friends and foes before the movies happen.

There are a lot of unique art forms to North America: Jazz, Rock and Roll, Comic Books. In many ways, they make up the pop culture mythos of America. To this list I would add action movies. The eighties gave birth to a whole new genre of over-the-top, hyper-masculine action films, and reigning supreme on top of that heap is 1988’s Die Hard. With its reluctant hero, its tongue-in-cheek humour, and unforgettable action sequences, it is one of the most memorable American films of the last fifty years.

BOOM! Studios has produced its own addition to the Die Hard legacy with the Die Hard: Year One comic book series, and as an experiment in expanding the John McClane legend, it’s a roaring success.

As with the first six issues, Die Hard: Year One #7, based on the beginning of the character John McClane’s life from the hit movies of the same name, was a fun romp through the world of the Die Hard universe. Every issue of this comic book is like a brand new summer action movie.

Well I would like to start off by saying that the art on the book, by Gabriel Andrade Jr.,, is phenomenal and is the perfect mixture of photo reference and cartooning. John McClane looks like he should but not so much that every time I see him I think about how eerie it is that Bruce Willis is staring at me through the panels.

Another thing that I enjoy but most people probably don’t pay much attention to is the cover design for the series. It takes a very distinctive step away from the mainstream and I enjoy it a lot. It reminds me a lot of something Jonathan Hickman would design. The covers for this issue were done by Joe Jusko, Dave Johnson, and John Paul Leon.